studied, and wished to translate to others. This seems to have been true even of some of the most distinguished of them. Of course, the idea of preserving an author's text untouched, and making it clear just where note and commentary came in, had not yet come to men's view, but quite apart from this the Arabs apparently often tried to gain acceptance for their own ideas by having them masquerade as the supposed ideas of favorite classic authors.

Another unfortunate tendency among the Arabs was their liking for the discussion of many trivial questions. Hyrtl, in his volume on "Arabian and Hebrew Words in Anatomy," declares that it is almost incredible how earnestly some trivial questions in anatomy and physiology were discussed by the Arabs. He gives some examples. Why does no hair grow on the nose of men? Why does the stomach not lie behind the mouth? Why does the windpipe not lie behind the esophagus? Why are the breasts not on the abdomen? Why are not the calves on the anterior portion of the legs? Even such men as Rhazes and Avicenna discuss such questions.

It was this tendency of the Arabs that passed over to the Western Europeans with Arabian commentaries on philosophy and science, and brought so many similar discussions in the scholastic period. These trivialities have usually been supposed to originate with the scholastics themselves, for they are not to be found in the Greek authors on whom

"Das Arabische und Hebräische in der Anatomie," Dr. Joseph Hyrtl, Wien, 1879.

the scholastics were writing commentaries, but they are typically Oriental in character, and it must be remembered that during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, at least, Greek philosophy found its way largely into Europe in Arab versions, and these characteristically Arabian additions of the discussion of curious trivial questions came with them and produced an imitative tendency among the Europeans.

As a rule the more careful has been the study of Arabian writers in the modern time, particularly by specialists, the clearer has it become that they lacked nearly all originality. Especially were they faulty in their observations; besides, they had a definite tendency to replace observation by theory, a fatal defect in medicine. The fine development of surgery that came at the end of the Arabian period of medicine in Europe could never have come from the Arabs themselves. Gurlt has brought this out particularly, but it will not be difficult to cite many other good authorities in support of this opinion. Hyrtl, in his "Thesis on the Rarer Old Anatomists," i says that "the Arabs paid very little attention to anatomy, and, of course, because of the prohibition in the Koran, added nothing to it. Whatever they knew they took from the Greeks, and especially Galen. Not only did they not add anything new to this, but they even lost sight of much that was important in the older authors. The Arabs were much more interested in physiology; they could study this by giving thought to it without soil

1" Anat. Antiq. Rariores," Vienna, 1835.

ing their hands. They delighted in theory, rather than in observation."

A

While we thus discuss the lack of originality and the tendency to over-refinement among the Arabian medical writers, it must not be thought that we would make little of what they accomplished. They not only preserved the old medical writers for us, but they kept alive practical medicine with the principles of the great Greek thinkers as its basis. There are a large number of writers of Arabian medicine whose names have secured deservedly a high place in medical history. If this were a formal history of Arabian medicine, their careers and works would require discussion. For our purpose, however, it seems better to confine attention to a few of the most prominent Arabian writers on medicine, because they will serve to illustrate how thoroughly practical were the Arabian physicians and how many medical problems that we are prone to think of as modern they occupied themselves with, solving them not infrequently nearly as we do in the modern time.

VI

THE MEDICAL SCHOOL AT SALERNO

The Medical School at Salerno, probably organized early in the tenth century, often spoken of as the darkest of the centuries, and reaching its highest point of influence at the end of the twelfth century, is of great interest in modern times for a number of reasons., First it brought about in the course of its development an organization of medical education, and an establishment of standards that were to be maintained whenever and wherever there was a true professional spirit down to our own time. They insisted on a preliminary education of three years of college work, on at least four years of medical training, on special study for specialist's work, as in surgery, and on practical training with a physician or in a hospital before the student was allowed to practise for himself. At Salerno, too, the department of women's diseases was given over to women professors, and we have the text-books of some of these women medical teachers. The license to practise given to women, however, seems to have been general and did not confine them merely to the care of women and children. We have records of a number of these licenses issued to women in the neighborhood of Salerno. This subject of feminine medical education at Salerno, because of its special interest in our time, will have a chapter by itself.

These are the special features of medical education in our own time that we are rather prone to think of as originating with ourselves and as being indices of that evolution of humanity and progress in mankind which are culminating in our era. It is rather interesting, then, to study just how these developments came about and what the genesis of this great school was. The books of its professors were widely read, not only in their own generation but for centuries afterwards. With the invention of printing at the time of the Renaissance most of them were printed and exerted profound influence over the revival of medicine which took place at that time. / Salerno became the first of the universities in the modern sense of the word. Here there gathered round the medical school, first a preparatory department representing modern college work, and then departments of theology and law, though this latter department particularly was never quite successful. The fact that the first university, that of Salerno, should have been organized round a medical school, the second, that of Bologna, around a law school, and the third, that of Paris, around a school of theology and philosophy, would seem to represent the ordinary natural process of development in human interests. First man is interested in himself and in his health, then in his property, and finally in his relations to his fellow-man and to God.

Though much work has been done on the subject in recent years, it is not easy to trace the origin of the medical school at Salerno. The difficulty is emphasized by the fact that even the earliest chroniclers whose accounts we have were not sure as to its